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Jan 09, 2024

Scripps Spelling Bee: Eighth Grader From Florida Wins With 'Psammophile'

In the 15th round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Dev Shah spelled

In the 15th round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Dev Shah spelled "psammophile" correctly to win $50,000, a commemorative medal and the coveted trophy.

transcript

"If you spell this next word correctly, we will declare you the 2023 National Spelling Bee champion: psammophile." "Psammo, meaning ‘sand,’ Greek? Oh." "Wait a second." [chuckle] "Psammo, meaning ‘sand,’ Greek?" "Yes." "Phile, meaning ‘lover,’ Greek?" "You’re on the right track." "Can I please have all the information?" "Psammophile is a noun from Greek. A psammophile is an organism that prefers or thrives in sandy soils or areas." "Psammophile. May I please have the sentence?" "Any psammophile, for example, a cactus, would flourish in the Arizona desert. Can you say it for us?" "Psammophile. Psammophiles." "Psammophile." "P- S- A- M- M- O- P-H- I-L-E, psammophile." "That is correct." [crowd cheering] "The hug from Charlotte and Morgan Fitzgerald Middle School celebrates in Largo, Florida. He had family watching in New Jersey and in India. His friends from back home celebrating, his father, Deval; his mother, Nilam; and little brother Neil. They’ll be talking about this for the rest of Dev's life. Your 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.

Maria Cramer and Remy Tumin

Confetti rained down on Dev Shah, a 14-year-old eighth grader from Largo, Fla., as he beamed and covered his mouth on Thursday night.

He had just spelled "psammophile," a plant or animal that prefers or thrives in sandy areas, to become champion of the 2023 Scripps Spelling Bee, the Super Bowl for young masters of the English dictionary.

"It's surreal," he said as he held the coveted Scripps cup, the official championship trophy. "My legs are still shaking."

Dev outlasted Charlotte Walsh, an eighth grader from Merrifield, Va., to win $50,000 in cash and a commemorative medal. Charlotte, who finished in second place, will receive $25,000.

The moment was a culmination for Dev, who had spent the last four years studying for the bee and the past year studying 10 hours each day, according to his mother.

When his parents rushed the stage to hug him, he felt overwhelmed, Dev said in an interview after the competition.

"It gave me the reassurance that I should never give up, no matter what," he said.

A fan of Roger Federer and the movie "La La Land," Dev had competed in previous bees, tying for 76th place in 2021 and 51st place in 2019. In 2022, he did not make it out of the regional competition in his home state.

Because Dev is an eighth grader, this was his last year to compete, and he bested beasts of the dictionary like "chiromancy," "schistorrhachis" and "aegagrus."

However, his competition was stiff.

The finals began with 11 spellers, the youngest of them Sarah Fernandes, an 11-year-old from Omaha. More than half of the spellers were eighth graders and seasoned competitors by the bee's standards.

The final three spellers included Charlotte, a black belt in taekwondo who last year tied for 32nd place, and Surya Kapu, a 14-year-old eighth grader from Salt Lake City, who finished in a tie for fifth place in 2022.

Surya fell to "kelep," the word for a Central American stinging ant, spelling it instead with a q, denying Utah its first national title and leaving Charlotte and Dev in the final high-stakes duel.

Dev went first, correctly spelling "bathypitotmeter," an instrument that measures the velocity and temperature of water at certain depths.

Charlotte was given the word "daviely," which means listlessly.

"Oh my god," she said, as she struggled. Mary Brooks, the bee's main judge, rang the bell after Charlotte spelled the word D-A-V-I-E-L-I-C-K, giving Dev his chance — after waiting through a commercial break.

"It was nerve-racking," he said.

When Jacques A. Bailly, the bee's pronouncer, uttered the word, Dev said he immediately recognized the two roots and was able to piece them together, evidenced by a slight smile as he spoke.

Scott Remer, Dev's coach, said it was clear that Dev was feeling strong about his ability to spell the words Dr. Bailly was throwing at him.

"He has a capacious memory, a real love of language and he was resilient," he said. "I couldn't be prouder."

The competition has become more difficult in the last two years, as its organizers have added new rules to challenge the spellers and to avoid a repeat of 2019, when eight co-champions were declared after exhausting the bee's list of challenging words in a four-hour contest.

In 2021, organizers introduced a vocabulary round, in which spellers have to identify the correct meaning of the word.

Last year, they introduced the spell-off, an intense showdown, in which the remaining spellers have 90 seconds to spell as many words correctly as possible. Harini Logan, an eighth grader from San Antonio, won in 2022 by correctly spelling 21 words.

Mr. Remer said many of his students do not like the spell-off. One of them was Dhruv Subramanian, a 12-year-old from San Ramon, Calif., who placed fifth on Thursday night.

"I don't think they’re the fairest and best way to conduct the bee," Dhruv said in an interview, adding that even though he had lost, he had "gone above and beyond" his goals by getting to the finals.

Dev had even practiced for the possibility of a spell-off, Mr. Remer said. Still, was he relieved he avoided one?

"Yes," Mr. Remer. "Very, very much, yes."

.

Maggie Astor and Remy Tumin

After 14 rounds of words like "probouleutic" and "zwitterion" and "schistorrhachis," Dev Shah, an eighth grader from Florida, reached the apotheosis of his craft, correctly spelling "psammophile" to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night.

He denied the spelling community another thrilling spell-off, outlasted the dominant Texans and didn't let the schwa make him schweat.

If you weren't able to watch the finals on Thursday night, here are a few takeaways.

The schwa — the "uh"-like sound that can be represented by any vowel in the English alphabet, also known as the bane of competitive spellers’ existence — knocked out several finalists, as it routinely does.

It defeated Arth Dalsania, who swapped in an "a" for the "u" in "katuka," a venomous snake also known as Russell's viper. In the 12th round, the insidious schwa claimed two victims: Vikrant Chintanaboina ("pataca," which he misspelled as "petaca") and Aryan Khedkar ("pharetrone," which he misspelled as "pharotrone").

It's hard to blame the contestants, considering that a schwa can be any of six letters — or none. It's the "a" in balloon, the "e" in item, the "i" in family, the "o" in lemon, the "u" in support, the "y" in analysis and the, umm, nothing before the "m" in rhythm.

Unlike last year, when the champion was determined by a first-ever spell-off after exhausting the regular word list after 18 rounds, the bee did not need such extraordinary measures this time.

By the 14th round, the field had dwindled to two competitors: Dev and Charlotte Walsh. Dev walked up to the microphone, heard the word "bathypitotmeter" — "an instrument designed to record the current velocity and water temperature at indicated depths below the surface of a sea or lake," Merriam-Webster says — and spelled it as if he were reciting his own name.

Walsh, meantime, was stumped on "daviely," which she spelled "daevilick."

All Dev needed to do then was spell one more word in Round 15, and he did.

Contestants from Texas usually stack the finals, and they often win the title: In fact, four of the last seven bees featured champions from the Lone Star State.

But of the 21 competitors from Texas in this year's bee — more than from any other state — only one reached the finals: Tarini Nandakumar, who was knocked out in the 10th round on a vocabulary question.

In all, the 11 finalists represented a vast swath of the United States, hailing from Utah to Pennsylvania, Nebraska to Virginia. Four were from California, with three sponsored by the same rotary club in San Ramon.

The lone Floridian in the finals, Dev, from Largo, outside St. Petersburg, gave the state its first winner since 1999.

Can you spell these words from past rounds of the Scripps Spelling Bee?

Can you spell the word, pronounced mə·ˈrang, that is a dessert topping consisting of a baked mixture of stiffly beaten egg whites and sugar? It was the third word of the first round in last year's Bee.

mirang

marrang

merangue

meringue

Lauren McCarthy

All but one triumphant competitor was eliminated from the 2023 spelling bee.

Here are some of the words that did the other 228 spellers in, with definitions courtesy Merriam-Webster.

daviely: a Scottish adverb meaning listlessly.

kelep: a Central American stinging ant that lives in small colonies in the ground especially near clearings.

pataca: the basic monetary unit of Macao.

pharetrone: of or relating to the Pharetrones, which is a group of thick-walled sponges that have their spicules united in a rigid network.

crenel: one of the embrasures alternating with merlons in a battlement.

chthonic: of or relating to the underworld.

leguleian: a pettifogger, which is a lawyer whose methods are petty, underhanded or disreputable.

querken: to cause to gasp.

pridian: of or relating to a previous day or to yesterday.

meromictic: undergoing incomplete circulation at the fall overturn.

probouleutic: concerned with preliminary discussion of and deliberation on something (as a legal measure) later to be submitted to another body of voters

conversazione: a meeting for conversation especially about art, literature or science.

quayage: a charge for use of a quay, which is a structure built parallel to the bank of a waterway for use as a landing place.

viridans: producing alpha hemolysis, which is a greenish discoloration and partial hemolysis of the red blood cells immediately surrounding colonies of some streptococci on blood agar plates.

Remy Tumin and Maggie Astor

When Dev Shah, 14, stepped up to the podium in the 15th round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, he instantly identified the roots of his word. Still, he asked for all of the information — just to be safe.

His smile suggested he was pretty sure he had it. And he did, correctly spelling "psammophile" to win the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee.

"It's surreal," he said as he held the coveted Scripps Cup, the official championship trophy of the bee. "My legs are still shaking."

The winning word referred to an organism that prefers or thrives in sandy areas. Jacques A. Bailly, the pronouncer, used the example of a cactus thriving in Arizona.

Dev won after Charlotte Walsh, 14, tripped on spelling "daviely," an adverb of Scottish origin meaning listless.

Dev, an eighth grader from Largo, Fla., defeated 228 other competitors (including 10 other finalists) from around the United States to win $50,000 in cash. He dashed any hopes of a spell-off, in which the remaining spellers have 90 seconds to spell as many words correctly as possible. The new feature was introduced last year.

An earlier version of this article misidentified the round in which Dev Shah won the Scripps National Spelling Bee. It was the 15th, not the 14th.

How we handle corrections

Lauren McCarthy

If you’re wondering about the winning word: A psammophile is an organism that prefers or thrives in sandy areas. Dr. Bailly used the example of a cactus thriving in Arizona.

Maggie Astor

"It's surreal," Dev Shah says. "My legs are still shaking."

Remy Tumin

Here comes the confetti!

Maggie Astor

Dev instantly identified the roots of his word, but asked for all the information just to be safe, while smiling slightly in a way that suggested he was pretty sure he had it. The word was "psammophile," he got it right, and Dev Shah is the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.

Maggie Astor

It's the moment of truth for Dev.

Maggie Astor

Charlotte misspells "daviely." (She said, "Oh my God," at one point while considering.) It's not over yet, though, because Dev still has to spell the next word correctly. If he spells it correctly, he's the champion. If he misspells it, the competition continues.

Maria Cramer

"This isn't spell off, right?" Dev asked, looking very nervous.

Maggie Astor

Dev very quickly spells "bathypitotmeter." Impressive.

Remy Tumin

Charlotte appears to be one of the taller spellers in the competition, and Dr. Bailly has had to ask her to lean into the mic repeatedly.

Maggie Astor

Charlotte correctly spells "akuammine."

Maria Cramer

As the head judge Mary Judge speaks, her voice breaks a little, telling Surya he has done an "amazing job." The crowd gives him a standing ovation. He says a quiet "thank you," high fives the two remaining contestants, Dev Shah and Charlotte Walsh, and walks off.

Maggie Astor

Surya, in his last year of eligibility, did not win. But, placing third, he did two places better than last year, and he made his mark by being the only finalist from 2022 to make the finals again in 2023.

Lauren McCarthy

Surya Kapu misspelled "kelep," a Central American stinging ant, incorrectly saying Q-U-E-L-E-P. Utah will not see its first national title tonight. There are only two spellers remaining.

Remy Tumin

Dev correctly spelled "tolsester."

Lauren McCarthy

Shradha Rachamreddy misspelled "orle," a heraldic term, incorrectly saying O-R-E-L. The 13th round begins by dropping down to only three remaining spellers.

Maria Cramer

Dr. Bailly often makes jokes to help word. When defining haysel, the season for cutting and curing grass, he quipped: "Connor can always tell when it's haysel because his dad's sneezes sound like Fred Flintstone falling down the stairs." I’ve noticed that while the audience titters, the spellers at the microphone rarely laugh.

Maggie Astor

It took Charlotte a couple tries to correctly identify the language of origin of her word, but she got it in the end!

Remy Tumin

Charlotte finished out the round strong, correctly spelling "collembolous." We enter the next round with four contestants.

Lauren McCarthy

Surya correctly spelled "haysel."

Maggie Astor

We’re down to four remaining spellers: Dev, Surya, Charlotte and Shradha.

Maggie Astor

Aryan repeated his word, "pharetrone," several times, trying to understand the pronunciation. He shook his head as he spelled it, indicating uncertainty with his answer.

Maria Cramer

Aryan Khedkar, 12, a seventh grader from Waterford, Mich., who loves Jolly Ranchers and solving Rubik's Cubes, is out. He was one of the more emotional spellers, often repeating the word over and over again and sighing nervously.

Maggie Astor

"Deep breath," Dr. Bailly tells Aryan, who looks nervous.

Remy Tumin

Shradha, 13, is a 7th grader from San Ramon, Calif., and appearing in her third Scripps National Spelling Bee. She finished 51st in 2019 and 23rd last year. Her favorite food is ice cream and favorite movie is "Home Alone 2." I can relate!

Maggie Astor

Surya Kapu, 14, is an eighth grader in Salt Lake City and one of five remaining spellers, which means he's guaranteed to finish at least as well as he did last year — in a tie for fifth (He also competed in 2019, when he tied for 370th.). He likes chess, basketball and playing the saxophone, and is a black belt in tae kwon do, according to his spelling bee biography. When I spoke with him last week, he said one of his techniques for preparing was to make lists of words with common origins, like all words that come from Arabic.

Maria Cramer

Left in the competition are Charlotte Walsh, 14, an eighth-grader from Merrifield, Va., who has a black belt in tae kwon do, and Dev Shah, 14, also in the eighth grade. He lives in Largo, Fla., plays the cello and his favorite movie is La La Land.

Remy Tumin

Competitive spelling also requires a deep support team — family, coaches, teachers — but most important, "it has to be a personal passion," one spelling coach told me. "Good spellers are never forced."

Remy Tumin

What makes a good speller? One spelling coach told me they tend to be kids who are good at recognizing patterns. They also have to excel in vocabulary, Latin and Greek roots, orthographic rules, memorization and have a streamlined study method.

Remy Tumin

Jacques A. Bailly, the bee's pronouncer, has a few tricks to pronouncing words correctly. First, he tries to make eye contact with the speller to try to put them at ease. Then he quietly reads the word to himself. He also has two fact checkers beside him to make sure he's saying it right.

Lauren McCarthy

Dev said his favorite part of spelling on stage is saying "Hi, Dr. Bailly," because it's the only second he's not nervous. He correctly spelled "rommack," which means to romp or play boisterously.

Remy Tumin

Shradha correctly spelled "tallate."

Maria Cramer

Vikrant has to walk past the Scripps Cup to leave the stage. You can see him grimace as he glances at it on his way off the stage.

Maria Cramer

Down to five. The schwa strikes again, eliminating Vikrant Chintanaboina, who misspells pataca.

Remy Tumin

Dhruv Subramanian misspelled "crenel," incorrectly saying C-R-E-N-E-L-L-E. He had been so confident throughout this competition, and we are down to six spellers.

Maria Cramer

Charlotte, who has a black belt in karate, has a strong cheering squad. One of her brothers gaped and threw his arms up in relief as she moved on.

Maggie Astor

Occasionally, Dr. Bailly asks a competitor to repeat a word back to him and corrects a subtletly in their pronunciation. He just did so with Charlotte, who appeared to mouth, "Oh my God" in surprised relief when she got her word right.

Lauren McCarthy

As the last speller of the round, Charlotte correctly spelled "Jhangar."

Remy Tumin

Surya correctly spelled nunnari, a root of Indian sarsaparilla used as a substitute for sarsaparilla.

Amanda Montell, Andrew Herzog and Nicky Tesla

According to some estimates, nearly 80 percent of the English language consists of foreign loanwords — terms that have been borrowed from other languages.

This hodgepodge of influences is what makes English words so difficult to spell.

What do you get when you combine this orthographical mishmash with a hypercompetitive culture? The spelling bee.

Now it's your turn. We’ve pulled 10 words from past Scripps Bee competitions or training lists. Each word will be revealed after a series of clues. Feel free to guess along the way. Good luck!

Remy Tumin

Good spellers are like good detectives: They know how to ask the right questions and use the answers as clues to solve puzzles.

Good spellers tend to be children who are good at recognizing patterns, said Scott Remer, a former competitor turned coach. They’ll start the methodical process of piecing together the clues — asking for a definition, the origins of the word, the part of speech, different pronunciations — before making a hypothesis and proposing a spelling.

Mr. Remer said a good speller has to focus on several areas of study in order to succeed: vocabulary, Latin and Greek roots, orthographic rules for each language, memorization, and a streamlined study method.

Then there are the "habits of character" that the bee requires, encourages and reinforces, he said, including self-discipline, poise and grit, characteristics that are more widely seen in the older competitors.

Spellers who get caught in the fight-or-flight response can't refer back to their coaching or study sessions, he said.

"Panic can be a very big enemy of a speller," he said.

But no matter how many words or roots a competitor can study, intuition — and luck — still play a big role in the outcome.

"You can study all you want, but at the end of the day, there may be words that you come across that you’ve never spelled before," he said.

That's why an unbridled dedication to studying and fascination with words is so important, said Grace Walters, a recent Rice University graduate who has been coaching for eight years. Spelling might be something a child picks up as a hobby, but what sets them apart as a competitor is passion, Ms. Walters said.

"What the spelling bee is all about is an intimacy with language," she said, adding that studying for the bee is about learning how words describe and contextualize the world. "You have to understand history and the English language and how it interacts with other languages."

Ms. Walters coached three of the eight finalists in 2019, as well as last year's winner, Harini Logan. She said the final days of preparation are all about quality over quantity. Some competitors might study for 12 hours a day, while others might study for only three or four hours a day and instead spend time "centering themselves, reviewing mistakes and relaxing."

Champions have to want it for themselves — not their parents, or coaches or others in their support network.

"It has to be a personal passion," she said. "Good spellers are never forced."

Remy Tumin

When Rohan Rajeev stepped up to the microphone at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2017, he tried to keep his mind focused on one thing: It was just him against the dictionary.

"There was definitely a big part of me that thought, ‘This is on me; the onus is on me whether I spell this word right,’" he recalled in an interview last week. "It would be wrong to say there's not a competitive aspect, but in a sense it's very different than other competitions."

Then, he got the word marram, a type of beach grass.

"I heard the word and was like, ‘Oh, this isn't good,’" Mr. Rajeev said. He could usually piece together some clues to figure it out, but the definition and root of the Scandinavian word didn't help. "I had no idea, so I threw out a combination of letters."

Mr. Rajeev, now a rising junior at Harvard, is one of dozens of runners-up who have been within grasp of a national title, only to fumble. For many, the disappointment comes after years of studying, building up to face an incredible level of pressure — only to be brought down to reality by a combination of letters.

Mr. Rajeev spelled the word m-a-r-e-m, ending his first and what would be his only chance at winning the championship. While being eliminated stung in the moment, looking back, runners-up like Mr. Rajeev said it was well worth the experience.

"It totally changed my life," said Cole Shafer-Ray, who lost to two co-champions in 2015. Today, he is a student at Yale and a spelling coach. He coached the 2021 winner, Zaila Avant-garde, to victory.

But the good did not immediately outweigh the bad.

"People think you’re really smart," Mr. Shafer-Ray said. "But it's also really easy to get defined as that. A lot of former spellers spend time trying to totally get rid of their spelling persona."

Eight years in, he's "embraced it."

Stuti Mishra has also had a change of heart since losing in 2012.

When she lost on a word that she had studied — schwarmerei, a German word for excessive enthusiasm — she said it absolutely crushed her.

"I was so upset because I was nearsighted and just reliving that moment over and over," Ms. Mishra, now 25, said in an email. "I would tell a younger version of myself to not take things so seriously, since moments like these are crucial to personal development and a growth mind-set."

But all was not lost. Ms. Mishra, now a senior financial adviser at Kraft Heinz, went on to minor in German at Princeton.

"So even now, when I ‘fail,’ I remind myself to stay farsighted and see how I can learn from it to better myself in the long run," she said.

Maggie Astor

Akash Vukoti was 6 when he first made Scripps National Spelling Bee history, becoming the youngest boy ever to qualify for the competition. The accomplishment got him featured on Steve Harvey's "Little Big Shots," an experience Vukoti still speaks of with enthusiasm.

This week, just a few days after turning 14, he made history again by participating in the national competition for a sixth time — something no other speller has done. He made it to the fourth round before on Wednesday night misspelling the word "graisse." (He spelled it "graice.")

He was a little nervous before the competition, he said in an interview last week, but not too much, as that had largely faded after so many years. Mostly, he was eager to be back onstage, where "it's you against the dictionary."

"Now I have all the experience of having competed there before, and I’ve sort of been able to weave through it all," said Vukoti, an eighth grader in San Angelo, Texas. "I’m still feeling as excited as ever, especially given that this is the final year of eligibility for me, as I’m in eighth grade now. I still feel really, really excited. It's going to be really fun."

The one piece of untrodden ground for him would have been to make the final round, which consists of 11 spellers this year. His best finish was his first, in 2016, when he tied for 46th place. He went on to tie for 323rd place in 2018, 51st in 2019, 72nd in 2021 and 89th in 2022. This year, he tied for 74th.

When he is not working to memorize the dictionary, including the meanings and etymologies of every word in the English language, Vukoti runs a YouTube channel offering words of the day (fittingly, "reprise" was a recent one) and a weekly review of world news (topics include the Group of 7 summit and Fox News's firing of Tucker Carlson).

He has many ideas for what to do next. He has long wanted to become an astronaut, but his TV appearances have gotten him interested in acting or hosting, too. He also enjoys coding.

Whatever he does, Vukoti thinks his years of competing in spelling bees have set him up well.

"Anyone competing would have a firsthand base, more of less, of whatever they want to do in the future," he said. "They learned all of those words relating to that field and the meanings that apply to them, too."

His immediate plans may not be too far removed from those dictionary sessions: He is thinking about spending the summer learning French or German, he said.

Maggie Astor

Of the 229 spellers competing in the Scripps National Spelling Bee this week, just 41 were returning from last year. And then there is an even more rarefied group: finalists from last year who are back for another try.

There, Surya Kapu and Kirsten Tiffany Santos — who tied for fifth place last year — stand alone.

Kapu, now a 14-year-old eighth grader in Salt Lake City, ended his 2022 bee with an incorrect definition of "lissome." (He chose "carefree" on the multiple-choice question about the word's definition; the correct answer was "limber.") Santos, now a 12-year-old seventh grader in Richmond, Texas, incorrectly chose "cradle" as a synonym for "bastille." (The correct answer was "prison.")

In other words, they had unfinished business.

"I definitely want to become the champion," Santos, who has been studying four to six hours a day, said in an interview last week. "I really want to learn more words and show what I know, but mostly I really want to get that trophy. I want to become a champion."

Unfortunately — after spelling "galena," "tenuous" and "atavism," identifying a calabash as a type of gourd and correctly noting that if something is uncanny, it "arouses feelings of inexplicable strangeness" — Santos was eliminated in the sixth round on Wednesday night. She misspelled "livetin," substituting a Y for the second I, and finished in a tie for 22nd place.

But Kapu has made it back to the finals after spelling "sororal," "Australasia," "overslaugh," "cyclas" and "zwitterion," as well as correctly defining "primeval," "extol" and "syllogistic."

Parts of the preparation process are common to every speller. They all meticulously study the dictionary. But they put in their own twists, finding strategies that work for them.

For Kapu, who is in his last year of eligibility for the bee, it varies from day to day. Sometimes he goes through the dictionary, looking for words he doesn't know. Other times, he compiles words with a given origin or definition — for instance, making a list of English words that derive from Arabic.

It is a numbers game, and that is what makes him more confident this year than last: He knows a lot more words.

Santos, who has one more year of eligibility, said the simple fact of having a year of experience made her feel more prepared for the psychological aspect of the competition.

"I learned I need to focus word by word and not think about the other rounds when I’m in this one," she said.

She was also looking forward to mingling and making new friends throughout the week.

"It was relaxing. It was calming," she said of the offstage activities last year. "It just made it feel like home."

Remy Tumin

In the days leading up to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, competitors made sure they knew their phonemes and root words. They were not the only ones.

On Sunday, Jacques A. Bailly gathered with the bee's other pronouncers, along with its vocabulary team, in what he described as an "all word-nerds hands on deck" to go through the entire list of words and practice saying each one aloud.

"We all listen and make sure that all the T's are dotted and the I's are crossed, or the other way around," he said.

Mr. Bailly won the bee in 1980 at the age of 14, and he has been pronouncing words for the competition since 2003. He traced his interest in spelling back to first grade, when he learned to read using phonics, sounding out each consonant, symbol and letter until it formed a word — not too different from what he does before a national audience.

Mr. Bailly does not have a bigger-than-normal breakfast before the competition. He does not do vocal exercises or sip on tea to relax his vocal cords. However, he does have a few tricks to make sure he pronounces a word on the first try.

First, he tries to make eye contact with the speller and humanize the moment.

"I’m thinking, ‘Can I get this person to make human contact and try to put them at ease?’" he said.

Then, as the competitor is walking up to the podium, Mr. Bailly looks at the word and quietly reads it to himself.

"When you’re reading English, you go pretty fast and take things for granted and occasionally do a double take," he said. "I try to do a double take every time."

When that doesn't work, he has two fact checkers beside him who verify that he is pronouncing words correctly. If he ever misses anything, he is "keenly aware," he said, of associate pronouncer Brian Sietsema's elbow and head judge Mary Brooks's eyebrows.

Competitors typically trip up on non-English words, he said, especially French, a language that has seeped into English so much that he has credited it as the reason spelling bees exist. In fact, French can even trip up Mr. Bailly, a professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Vermont.

"If there's a word I find hard to spell, it's going to be French," he said.

Maria Cramer

By the time she was in the fifth grade, Zaila Avant-garde had learned to multiply and divide big numbers in her head. She broke Guinness World records for dribbling basketballs at 13. And at 14, she became the first Black American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

She spent hours a day, weeks and months on end, studying and practicing to accomplish these things. But talking about her achievements often made her feel like she was being boastful. When awed reporters interviewed her, she would often pepper her answers with semi-apologetic jokes.

After her win in 2021, she began writing a book, a sort of how-to on achieving your dreams. She and her collaborator on the book, the author Marti Dumas, often met at a Starbucks near Zaila's Louisiana home to work. One day, her mother, Alma Heard, sat nearby, reading as she waited for them to finish up.

Then she overheard Zaila use a self-deprecating tone to describe her accomplishments.

" Stop it! Why do you do it?" Ms. Heard said, according to Zaila. " It's not bragging if it's true."

Ms. Dumas loved that line and soon it became the title of her book, "It's not bragging if it's true: How to be awesome at life," a guide geared to 8- to 12-year-olds that made it into the top five of the New York Times best-seller list for children's middle-grade hardcovers.

"With intelligence and insightful humor, Avant-garde delivers an inspiring how-to manual that compels readers to lean into what makes them different and to never be ashamed of acknowledging their wins," Publisher's Weekly wrote in a review.

Zaila is happy about the success of the book. (She has another one coming out this month for younger children.) But she resisted the title for a while.

"Full disclosure: I actually hated the title," Zaila said, "simply because I don't want to be a braggart."

But Ms. Heard said she wants her daughter to be proud of how hard she has worked.

"She worked for every single thing she had," Ms. Heard said. "That's the part that escapes many people."

Zaila, an avid basketball player who now lives in Washington and believes she has probably read 1,000 books, said she has also thought about how girls are often discouraged from talking about their success.

"Oftentimes, it's more accepted as cool or awesome when men brag about their accomplishments," Zaila said. "Sometimes, we’re told to be quiet or modest about what we can do."

So she said that in recent months she has slowly come to embrace the title: "It's been growing on me."

Christine Hauser

Here is a guide to the rules for the Scripps National Spelling Bee — and their small changes for this year's competition, including a shorter allotted time to answer.

A speller must not have graduated the eighth grade or reached the age of 15 on or before Aug. 31, 2022, in order to compete. They must attend a school that is enrolled with the bee program and have been declared a champion of a Scripps sanctioned regional bee, among other stipulations.

The competition consists of four segments: preliminaries, quarterfinals, semifinals and the finals.

There are three rounds in the preliminary phase. A speller advances through them by correctly spelling a word and answering a multiple-choice question about its meaning. Then, there is another round of spelling.

One misplaced letter or incorrect answer means the speller does not advance.

In the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals, subsequent rounds take place for as long as there are successful spellers advancing.

In the quarterfinals, spellers keep competing until there is a "good number" to send on. There is no set number; officials have the flexibility to end that portion of the competition.

About 50 spellers can go to the semifinals, said Corrie Loeffler, the bee's new executive director.

"Once we get down to a good number to take to the finals, we will advance," she said, adding that it can be between nine and 14 spellers.

Each speller has 90 seconds per turn — 30 seconds less than last year.

The pronouncer, who reads the words, is Jacques A. Bailly, who has held the job since 2003 and won the bee in 1980 when he was 14. He can repeat a word and give its definition, part of speech, language of origin and alternate pronunciation, if it has any. He can also use it in a sentence.

After the pronouncer says the spelling word, the clock starts. To help the speller keep track of the seconds ticking away, a green light is displayed for one minute, then a yellow light for 15 seconds and finally a red light designates that 15 seconds are left.

In the word-meaning rounds, each speller has 30 seconds.

A speller must respond a certain way, by pronouncing each letter distinctly and speaking loud enough for the judges to hear them. The speller must pronounce the word after they spell it, which indicates they are done.

In the finals, if all the contestants spell incorrectly, they all continue in a new round.

If one speller is correct, that person will be given a spelling word drawn from the Championship Word List.

If answered correctly, the speller is declared the champion. "Confetti!" said Ms. Loeffler.

If the speller misspells the championship word, a new round will begin, bringing back the spellers from the round before and still competing with words drawn from the normal word list.

Organizers may declare a spell-off if there is no clear winner declared before the 1 hour 55 minute mark of the finals broadcast. A spell-off is a special round that is used to determine a champion or co-champions.

Spellers are sequestered unless it is their turn to answer. Each one is given a series of words from a special list, and they must spell as many as they can correctly within 90 seconds.

The person who spelled the most words correctly will be declared champion. If there is a tie, the judges will pick the speller who had the highest percentage of correct spellings.

If two or more spellers earn the same top score and same percentage of words spelled correctly, the judges will declare co-champions.

The official dictionary of the bee is the Merriam-Webster Unabridged. There are different lists of words used, including whether the competition is in its championship or spell-off stages.

This year, the bee will encourage spellers to ask more defined questions about a word's root, such as its pronunciation, origin and meaning, Ms. Loeffler said.

Johnny Diaz contributed reporting.

Remy Tumin

For nearly 100 years, the Scripps National Spelling Bee has showcased the biggest words from the youngest lexicologists. The inaugural champion, 11-year-old Frank Neuhauser of Louisville, Ky., correctly spelled "gladiolus" to claim a prize of $500 at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

The words have gotten only harder, the pressure greater and the national spotlight larger.

Of 229 competitors, about a dozen finalists have outmaneuvered their way to the finals, which begin at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday on the Ion and Bounce networks and should run until about 10 p.m. The finals cap nearly a week of competition at the National Harbor, a resort and waterfront development in Maryland.

Many Americans grew familiar with the bee from its national broadcast on ESPN, where it expanded in popularity, viewership and pop culture over the past few decades. But last year the bee moved to Ion, a Scripps subsidiary, in the hopes of finding viewers beyond paid TV subscribers.

According to the bee, that bet worked: Viewership of the 2022 finals increased by 147 percent from the previous year, and overall bee programming was watched by 7.5 million people — the event's largest audience since 2015.

The New York Times, which has covered spelling bees for almost 150 years, will continue that tradition Thursday night, reporting live on the spellers’ stories and the words they face. Definitions will come from the contest's dictionary partner, Merriam-Webster. The champion will take home more than $50,000 in cash and multiple reference works, like a replica of the 1768 Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The New York Times

In the early decades of the National Spelling Bee's run, students won by correctly spelling words familiar from newspaper articles, advertisements and everyday speech. Words like luxuriance, initials and knack.

Here's a sampling of winning words, with definitions courtesy of Merriam-Webster and sentences from The New York Times archive, when possible. (Example sentences that do not end with a publication date are inventions.)

1925 gladiolus: any of a genus of perennial plants of the iris family with erect sword-shaped leaves and spikes of brilliantly colored irregular flowers. "Ten years of selecting and cross-fertilizing, and a million seedlings to develop the superb California gladiolus from a weak-stemmed and scrawny flower, and the whole process delayed by a stray gopher." — Aug. 30, 1925

1930 fracas: a noisy quarrel. "At their headquarters, after the fracas, Communists said they had three films of snapshots taken on the ground and from upper floors of the building which will show that the alleged brutality was manifested yesterday." — May 19, 1929

1935 intelligible: capable of being understood. "As a general thing they can give no intelligible explanation of their conduct, or tell what they are in arms against the Government for." — Jan. 28, 1863

1940 therapy: medical treatment of impairment, injury, disease, or disorder. "Hypnotic Therapy Defended: Hypnosis, which has fallen into disfavor as a therapeutic technique, was defended as an experimental procedure by Dr. Cobb." — Dec. 29, 1938

1946 semaphore: an apparatus for visual signaling; a system of visual signaling by two flags. "A few days ago some American and British officers stepped ashore on Ponza to inspect its obsolete submarine cable and its dust-covered semaphore station." — Jan. 16, 1944

1949 dulcimer: a stringed instrument of trapezoidal shape played with light hammers held in the hands. "He plans to write a concerto for orchestra and santur, or santir, a Persian musical instrument similar to the dulcimer." — Nov. 22, 1942

1951 insouciant: lighthearted unconcern. "Insouciant Wizard Sits in Death Chair: Crowd at Radio Fair Gasps as He Defies Current and an Iron Bar ‘Melts in His Mouth.’" — Sept. 25, 1927

1955 crustaceology: carcinology; a branch of zoology concerned with the crustacea. "The marine biologist, for all her study of crustaceology, was awed at seeing hundreds of spider crabs, many with legs 10 feet long, clambering toward the aquarium doors."

1964 sycophant: a servile, self-seeking flatterer. "He has no fondness for political sycophants and yes-men." — Sept. 18, 1964

1980 elucubrate: to work out or express by studious effort. "Despite decades as a fan, he could not, to his own or anyone else's satisfaction, elucubrate his reasons for such devotion to Philadelphia teams."

1985 milieu: the physical or social setting in which something occurs. "The bottom line of Ken Auletta's article is clear: Even a company with deep roots and the long genteel tradition of Lehman Brothers succumbs in today's corporate milieu, in which rapacious leadership votes itself huge bonuses and stock options while company profits are plunging." — March 31, 1985

1990 fibranne: a fabric made of spun-rayon yarn. "Wool is mixed with fibranne, a synthetic fiber, as well as with cotton to give a crunchy texture to a beige suit that is vaguely Norfolk in derivation." — Sept. 9, 1964

1995 xanthosis: yellow discoloration of the skin from abnormal causes. "The movie's protagonists realized their friend might be in trouble when they saw his lemony xanthosis, then by catching a graveyard smell, then by hearing about his insatiable appetite for brains."

2004 autochthonous: indigenous, native. "Autochthonous forefathers of the present-day Finns are presumed to have appeared about the time Jesus was born, those of Finno-Ugrian origin perhaps in the vicinity of the Ural Mountains having migrated earlier to the lower Baltic seacoast." — Oct. 16, 1983

2008 guerdon: a reward, recompense. "An author's first reward is popular appreciation and sympathy — his second, and perhaps his greatest guerdon, is money." — July 29, 1861

2012 guetapens: an ambush, snare. "Admiral Ackbar, noticing too late that the Rebel Alliance had fallen in a simple guetapens set by the Empire, shouted the obvious: ‘It's a trap!’"

2014 stichomythia: dialogue especially of altercation or dispute delivered by two actors in alternating lines. "The rapid-fire one-line-exchanges (stichomythia) between characters, so stilted in most translations, blaze here with intense hostility, especially in the deadly verbal duel of Creon with his son Haemon." — Dec. 5, 2004

2015 scherenschnitte: the art of cutting paper into decorative designs. "Call ahead to take part in special weekend workshops in Pennsylvania German crafts of scherenschnitte (paper cutting), quilling (coiled paper art), decorative egg scratching and open-hearth cooking." — July 2, 2006

Alan Yuhas

From Akron to London to Dallas and Cape May, The New York Times has covered spelling bees for almost 150 years.

But even in 1874, when the phrase first appeared in the newspaper, it was called "a regular old-fashioned spelling bee" in Cleveland — reflecting the decades-long history of spelling contests in the United States. The "wordy combat" in Cleveland was open to everyone, and organizers struggled to find "orthographical monstrosities" to defeat the adult competitors, like chalybeate, phylactery, logarithmic and pharmaceutical.

"With a fiendish delight," an organizer "hurled those polysyllabic thunderbolts at the little class standing before him," the article read. Eventually, even the last two spellers "floundered hopelessly and gave up in despair."

Only two years later, a spelling bee "mania" hit England, according to The Times, which reported on a contest between 214 people at St. James Hall in London, with 25 pounds in prizes. Three hours in, the surviving spellers faced words like phthisic, mulligatawny, ptarmigan and vinaigrette, a word the The Times reporter called "not English."

The bee ended in confusion. A dispute over what room to finish the contest in led to everyone getting expelled "and nobody knows who got the prize-money."

In New York around the turn of the century, bees were popular among schoolchildren and adults alike. In 1906, at a spelling bee at Hester and Essex Streets in New York City, 18 schoolchildren were so competent that they were all declared winners together. In 1908, New Yorkers dressed up in silks and laces to compete in a bee at the Prince George Hotel on 28th Street, where competitors were given malted milk tablets as "brain-crackers."

That year, a 14-year-old Black girl named Marie Bolden, the daughter of a mail carrier, won an international contest in Cleveland. She earned "tremendous applause" from the audience and headlines for her achievement as the only speller to have a perfect score. (The Times first covered the National Spelling Bee in 1926, a year after its creation. A 13-year-old girl won $1,000 on "cerise.")

In 1930, members of Congress competed against newspaper reporters in a spelling bee in Washington, broadcast on the radio. It was over in 40 minutes, as the reporters "humbled" elected representatives, The Times reported. A Massachusetts congressman tripped up on "kimono," saying, "If one must go down to defeat he can wish no better fate than to be beaten by a member of the press rather than one of his own associates."

A few days later, a dispute over the spelling of one of the words — whether tranquillity had one or two l's — was front-page news. A representative from Nebraska felt he had been disqualified unfairly.

For decades, spelling bees big and small continued to receive coverage, bringing words like voile (a fine soft sheer fabric) and opiophagism (snake eating) to readers. In 1983, they heard President Ronald Reagan, on a visit with spellers, call for the elimination of the Department of Education. In 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle misspelled "potato" at a Trenton school spelling bee — even after a 12-year-old boy had spelled it correctly.

In the 2000s, the paper reflected the national competition's ever-growing popularity: Its pages featured spelling champion families and reviews of films about spelldowns. And, though the venue changed from a gleaming Manhattan hotel to the back of a Brooklyn bar, coverage continued of adults drinking and spelling late into the night.

Alan Yuhas

Before there were bees, there were spelling fights, spelling combat and spelldowns.

Those were some of the terms used to describe spelling competitions in the 19th century, when the contests took off around the United States. One of the first printed appearances of "spelling bee," with "bee" meaning a community activity or event, came in 1874, and the phrase gathered steam as the Gilded Age turned into the Progressive Era.

The first version of the national contest as we know it took shape in 1925. That year, The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky., asked several other newspapers, acting as sponsors, to help it take the Kentucky state spelling bee to the national level.

The U.S. education commissioner at the time, John Tigert, wrote to the Louisville newspaper that the contest would "awaken a new enthusiasm for careful and accurate spelling." More than two million schoolchildren sought to compete, and the finals came down to nine on a June night in Washington, D.C.

Frank Neuhauser, an 11-year-old from Kentucky, won in 90 minutes on the word "gladiolus," a plant with sword-shaped leaves that his family happened to grow in the garden. He got $500, a parade in Louisville and a meeting with President Calvin Coolidge. (He grew up to be a lawyer, and an autograph signer at other bees.)

The media company Scripps took over sponsorship of the bee in 1941, though the contest was canceled from 1943 through 1945 because of World War II. It first aired on television in 1946, and for the next half a century various networks broadcast it, turning viewers into living room spellers around the country.

Over those decades, the contest became more professionalized and difficult. Some parents hire past champions as coaches, or spend money to travel to minor-league bees. Online study programs can help spellers review thousands of words at a time, offering instant feedback. And amateur versions and variations of bees have proliferated, including two from The Times.